There’s a story Julian Barling likes to tell people when he’s making a presentation.

In 1995 he was teaching a transformational leadership course when a student asked if Mr. Barling would lead a training session for his staff.

When he declined, the student said something that changed his attitude towards teaching: “That’s the trouble with you professors — you never put your money where your mouth is.”

Mr. Barling has carried that lesson with him ever since that day. Now a professor of organizational behaviour and at Queen’s School of Business in Kingston, he has made it his mission to cross the divide between academia and business.

“It happened 20 years ago,” he says. “But it changed the way I view research and how I teach.”

Whereas he once tended to settle for a traditional teaching role, he has focused more on interchange with his students and the industries in which they work. “Now I listen and learn, hopefully as much as they do. That sharing is what makes adult education come alive.”

He also worked to expand beyond the classroom, setting to engage the outside world, either by bringing executive leaders into the school’s executive development facility, conducting one-week group sessions for professionals, or going into organizations to conduct on-site training.

“The more I listen to leaders I realize they are incredibly motivated, curious people with a hunger for more knowledge.”

Alex Kalil, professor at McGill’s Dobson Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies in Montreal, has been a long-standing proponent for injecting industry experience into the classroom. That’s because he has had a decades-long history conversing with students within and outside a campus environment.

“I’ve been teaching business all my life. If not in schools, it has been within my own companies,” he says.

Having also taught outside an academic setting, he understands the considerable value to be found in bringing worldly experience into classroom dialogues. “Class is not a textbook- or library-driven environment,” he says. “I make a point of bringing knowledge transfer: not just my own, but also from other business professionals.”

Over the years Mr. Kalil has built a vast network of professionals representing a broad range of industries, from manufacturing, healthcare, insurance and technology to law, finance and banking. This has made his classroom an incubator of sorts for mentorship.

“The people I bring in aren’t out of a phone book or directory. They have over 20 to 30 years of business experience or more.”

Mr. Kalil is also conscious of the need to refresh course instruction by constantly bringing in “new blood” to his guest mentor roster. “I’ve even brought in former students who went into professions after graduating. I like to bring real life into the classroom and take the classroom out into real life.”

That’s a change from when he started teaching. “It was pretty much straight-up teaching in terms of both the student makeup and the subject matter itself. But bringing in people from the real world of business changes the nature of each lecture session. Each person who comes in may have taken a different path to realizing their success.”

The push to bring relevance to traditional teaching methods is a constant one for business schools, says Allan Riding, acting vice-dean, Career Development, and Deloitte professor in the Management of Growth Enterprises at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. Beyond philosophical reasons, changing requirements from international accreditation bodies, such as the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the Association of MBAs, and the European Foundation for Management Development, is spurring the shift towards greater emphasis on applied business knowledge within the classroom.

“These bodies have a significantly growing focus not just on the number of publications we have, but also on their practical significance. In other words, what are faculty members contributing to the classroom through their research? This is something all business schools are facing.”

As such Telfer continues to stress and support the transition to more practical research results, Mr. Riding says. “Research used to be an esoteric ivory tower type pursuit, but now it has to be applicable to the real world.”

One key resource is the significant cohort of executives in residence that are very active in supporting the faculty and curriculum. A number of faculty members also keep ties with the thriving tech community to ensure their work meets the new criteria.

Mr. Riding says that while up to 35% of courses are taught by non-full time faculty members, academics are as integral to the programs as executives. “The key is balancing the best of both worlds. We have become a very diverse lot.”